“I admit it,” he answered, slowly stirring his tea.  “Yet in the main—­it is true.”

“How nice to hear all about it,” she sighed, contentedly.  “You know I have scarcely had a word with you while my uncle and cousins were up.  Selina monopolized you most disgracefully.”

He looked at her with twinkling eyes.

“Selina was very amusing,” he said.

“You seemed to find her so,” she answered.  “But Selina isn’t here now, and you have to entertain me.  You are really going to live in London?”

He nodded.

“I have taken rooms!”

“Delightful.  Whereabouts?” “In Jermyn Street!”

“And are you going to practise?”

He shook his head.

“No, I shall have enough to live on.  I am going to study social subjects and politics generally.”

“You are going into Parliament?” she exclaimed, breathlessly.

“Some day, perhaps,” he answered, hesitatingly.  “If I can find a constituency.”

She was silent for a moment.

“Do you know, I think I rather dislike you,” she said.  “I envy you most hideously.”

He laughed.

“What an evil nature!”

“Well, I’ve never denied it.  I’m dreadfully envious of people who have the chance of doing things, whose limitations are not chalked out on the blackboard before them.”

“Oh, well, you yourself are not at Medchester now,” he reminded her.  “You have kicked your own limitation away.  Literature is as wide a field as politics.”

“That is true enough,” she answered.  “I must not grumble.  After Medchester this is elysium.  But literature is a big name to give my little efforts.  I’m just a helper on a lady’s threepenny paper, and between you and me I don’t believe they think much of my work yet.”

He laughed.

“Surely they haven’t been discouraging you?”

“No, they have been very kind.  But they keep on assuring me that I am bound to improve, and the way they use the blue pencil!  However, it’s only the journalist’s part they go for.  The little stories are all right still.’’

“I should think so,” he declared, warmly.  “I think they are charming.”

“How nice you are,” she sighed.  “No wonder Selina didn’t like going home.”

He looked at her in amused wonder.

“Do you know,” he said, “you are getting positively frivolous.  I don’t recognize you.  I never saw such a change.”

She leaned back in her chair, laughing heartily, her eyes bright, her beautiful white teeth in delightful evidence.

“Oh, I suppose it’s the sense of freedom,” she exclaimed.  “It’s delightful, isn’t it?  Medchester had got on my nerves.  I hated it.  One saw nothing but the ugly side of life, day after day.  It was hideously depressing.  Here one can breathe.  There’s room for every one.”

“The change agrees with you!”

“Why not.  I feel years younger.  Think how much there is to do, and see, even for a pauper like myself—­picture galleries, the shops, the people, the theatres.”